How do I create book-like multi-column table formatting for a long, narrow tables in a preferably elegant way? Should I be thinking of stylesheets, instead of formatting? I guess this is a solved problem, after all.

Row expression below is my own, feeble attempt to solve the problem. Although output is reasonably OK, I detest many details on the implementation; for instance, the magic constant 1.2 needed to make columns evenly tall.

It is unclear what is detestable in the users own output. The "magic constant" 1.2 is simply the vertical item size -- not magic or a fudge factor or anything like that, just a standard way to size row heights. Some aesthetic changes could be made depending on personal preferences but the user has not indicated what these could be.
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Mike HoneychurchOct 10 '12 at 22:49

@Mr.Wizard I'm wondering if something is missing from your separated example, since it renders without separation in my case. I can see what you're trying to do. The problem here is that while first one keeps lines aligned, there's no separation, and while second one has separation, it actually results unaesthetically unaligned columns when contents contain accented text. Getting rid of both of these is awkward or kludgy...
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kirmaOct 10 '12 at 22:52

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